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People frequently comment on, or ask me about the relationship I have with my kids.  They often want to know "my secret" to being such good friends to my children.  I have tried in the past to describe what I think is the solution, but I haven't really been able to put my finger on it.  However, I spent yesterday in Philadelphia, chaperoning a field trip of teenagers, and while nursing a cold today, I was watching a movie which included the stereotypical sassy-mouthed, trashy-clothed teenagers.  I think I figured it out. We try to give our children everything that we think we will be good for them.  For some people, this is a lot of "stuff" which just makes for spoiled, entitled children.  Others deprive their children of anything special or fun (trying to avoid entitlement) which just makes for angry, resentful children.  There are a lot of gifts we can give our children, but I think one of the most important gifts we can give them is a sense of who...

Wow.  I think Hannie may get the award for the longest running "birthday season".  We like to make birthdays more than just the day itself, but she took it to the max. The crowning moment of the season was the chance to see Sara Bareilles in concert.  Sara is Johannah's favorite recording artist (not a surprise, considering their voices are in the same range and sound very much alike), and I was thrilled to see that she was touring the East Coast over Johannah's birthday.  We had our pick of cities--Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and NYC--but the NYC concert was being held in Radio City Music Hall.  Never having been there, I was sold on the venue and bought the tickets. It was a Wednesday, but the concert wasn't until 8 p.m.  NYC is a four hour drive, so I sent Hannah to seminary and school in the morning.  I picked her up around noon, and we were off! (I interject a selfish note here.  It brought back a lot of fond memories of Anna, Ethan'...

Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you that I love to drive.  In fact, I joke that in my former life, I was a long-haul truck driver.  I think it comes from my Grandad Caruthers, a former bomber pilot.  He loved to drive too. I have done a LOT of driving over the past two months.   Just on 12 days of big trips, I have driven 5,312 miles to be exact.  I might get a couple more miles for driving around town.  Some of the miles have been shared (Jared drove to Dayton, and John and both drove to and from airports), but I was still sitting in a car.  Suffice it to say that I am VERY tired of driving. Here are some highlights: Music lessons in Philadelphia every Wednesday.  As Johannah and I have been making the college rounds, without exception, people look at us like we are insane when they hear we drive to Philadelphia each week.  It's a eight hour, round trip drive.  Find me a quality teacher in our area, and I'll stop driv...

1.  Hope that your child has been consistently practicing for the past 10-15 years of their life.  If they haven't, give up now and run for the hills. 2.  Find a great private teacher with even better connections.  It's no joke when the colleges ask if you have any family members or friends who have attended their schools, and they ask for their names and years of graduation . 3.  Be in one of two income levels:  poor as dirt, or rich as Donald Trump.  Otherwise, you're going to need all you can get from #2. 4.  Hope that you have saved every program from every concert your child has ever played, because each school is going to ask for a complete list of every orchestral, ensemble and solo piece your child has ever played.  Better yet, they might ask exactly if and when they performed it in public.  Of course, you have been telling your child to keep a running Google Doc of all performances (for ease of uploading when needed). ...

Orlando was hot.  Very hot.  For the entire week, we had been experiencing temperatures that reached almost 90 degrees, but with the humidity, it felt like 100.  Don't get me wrong--our family likes heat (as evidenced by our trips to the Caribbean), and you will rarely hear us complain, but there was a certain welcome relief when we walked into any restaurant on any resort and felt the cooling balm of the air conditioning. The main reason that we made this trip was to run a Disney run.  Since every marathon and half-marathon sponsored by Disney is on a Sunday, and since we don't run on Sunday, we were thrilled to find a race that was run on Saturday....kind of.  The Tower of Terror Ten Miler began on Saturday evening at 10 p.m. There was a certain relief in knowing that we would be running at night in Florida.  Back in my running days, when we would visit my grandparents in Tallahassee, I would head out for a three mile "maintenance run" (down to the ga...

Back in February, we made arrangements to visit Orlando again.  We haven't been there in years, and we thought it would be fun to participate in one of the Disney races.  We found The Tower of Terror Ten Miler, scheduled for October 5, and we made plans. We didn't think about it much at the time, but our first full day in Orlando was Glo's 14th birthday.  As things turned out, it couldn't have BEEN more fun, and I'm thinking that we might need to do it again. We told Glo to pick the park for the day.  Any park in Orlando.  There wasn't much debate once she found out about Universal Studios' The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  I mean, come on--who doesn't want to become a student at Hogwarts for a day? I knew that there was a birthday pin that Glo could get at guest services, but we were so excited to get in the park that we completely forgot about it.  Turns out that it didn't matter--the birthday gods had taken care of everything ;-) We...